Blog Single

So we have an issue I’d like to speak to you about, and it is an issue that has been haunting this land for centuries.

Domestic Terrorism.

This nation was built on domestic terrorism. This nation has grown from domestic terrorism. This nation is currently being ran on domestic terrorism. This nation will be destroyed by domestic terrorism.
And an alarming percentage of the domestic terrorist happen to be white.

Pick a decade in the bloody history of the U.S. and you will find that the decade was centered around domestic terrorism. Be it cyber, political, fiscal, and of course racial.

The KKK have been and still are domestic terrorist, 1978 “MOVE” bombing that happen in Philly was an act of domestic terrorism, and now a few decades later domestic terrorism has chosen to take the form of multiple school shootings and bombings. I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if lynching came back in full fashion. If you ask me, it’s only a matter of time.

But domestic terrorism hasn’t always been “analog.” In more recent years, technology has been used to further fuel the engine of domestic terrorism. Media and their choice of labels when it comes to black victims of police brutality, or even systematic racism in general has been added to the long list of weapons formed against people of color.

When a person or group of persons decide that they do not like the constitution of their nation, and they decide to change that with tools like fear, greed, poverty, and even death; that is an act of domestic terrorism.

A dog dies in an overhead compartment on an airplane, less than a week later we have something on the table for it. A shoe bomb is found at the airport, there is something on the table for it. BUT our schools get shot up, our night clubs get shot up, our communities get shot up, and we get excuses, circular arguments, or worse…silence. Unless it starts affecting the white populous, then we have some action. Drugs and violence have been in the streets of black communities for decades and now because there are white faces attached to it more and more, suddenly there is a problem that needs addressing.

Domestic terrorism has consumed our land.

It keeps flint from drinking clean water. It kept Natives of Standing Rock fighting for WEEKS for something they had a right too. It keeps congress from protecting our children. A few hundred thousand dollars and the conversations become “what A-R15’s?” It keeps money out of the hands of the needy and in the pocket of the greedy. It keeps little boys of color in the hood shooting jumpers or people and not doing higher level math or reading more than the talk box in a video game. It keeps youth centers closed, churches abandoned, schools boarded up, but liquor stores on the rise, gas stations in the hundreds and fast food in a surplus. It keeps little girls of color more focused on their bodies and being shamed for them, than her strength as a woman and how to mold that to her future.

Kinda hard to see school as a haven for education when the first thing they see is a cop in the parking lot and a metal detector in the front door. Why would a kid not skip, especially to save their life? Who knows what school will get shot up next?

Riot police use pepper spray on a mostly Native American group of peaceful protesters near the Standing Rock Reservation in North Dakota. Thursday, October 27th, 2016. Police moved in to clear protestors out of a camp set up directly in the path of the Dakota Access Pipeline. (Photo by Angus Mordant/Groundtruth)

Domestic terrorism has consumed our land.

It is in the voter’s office, or the squad car following you, because you’re 21 in an impala on 38 and Post going to work. It’s in your job that pays you less because of your gender. It is in our social media, how we speak to each other, how we have conditioned ourselves to scroll past certain issues. It is in our test scores, making children afraid they will never be good enough if they do not pass an unfair standard.

It went from burned crosses in your yard, to flooding your streets with cocaine and guns, to a campus being shot up, to now in the middle of your streets, in your neighborhoods it is walking hand and hand with tiki torches.

How much longer will WE live in fear. How much longer will WE allow those in power to control our lives via the threat of mass shootings, package bombings, harassment on the streets for how you look and nothing you’ve done?

War, death, greed, pain, suffering, alienation all of these things are the fruit from this hateful tree we have been nurturing, but what of the roots? What thrives under the soil of this nation? Or is what lies beneath a victim too?

To be blunt, domestic terrorism is an issue that will NOT go away until America acknowledges, calls it by name, creates open forum on the topic, and puts meaningful and realistic systems in order to dismantle it.

These are just the thoughts of a citizen that believes that WE THE PEOPLE IN ORDER TO FORM A MORE PERFECT UNION, can form a more perfect union, WE just have to believe that WE can live without the use of FEAR.

Domestic terrorism has consumed this nation, and I no longer want to be on the menu.
-T.S.-